[Lexicog] mentee/mentoree

[Benjamin Barrett]

Your right! I was in a rush when this thread caught me.

Stress does not seem to be an issue because the -ee suffix seems to 
maintain stress and allow stress on the syllable immediately preceding. 
-ate seems to be a common morpheme in non-monosyllabic verbs and seems 
to drop out readily (amputee).

One other item that struck me is that mentoree should certainly be 
acceptable because while there isn't a verb ment, there is a verb 
mentor. The fact that mentee is catching on instead perhaps indicates a 
shift in what's going on. BB

David Tuggy wrote:
>
> Seems more like "truncate a bit before adding -ee, as long as you can 
> still recognize the stem". Dedic is dissyllabic. And of course other 
> dissillable stems as in employee, attendee, etc. are perfectly normal; 
> those like standee or hiree are a bit odder.
>
> Or maybe it's "drop latinate derivational suffixes (e.g. -ize, -ate) 
> before adding -ee. (I have collected others where -ate is dropped 
> before -ee, but am not finding them.
>
> --David Tuggy
>
> Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>
>> Excellent counterexamples to my claim, thank you!
>>
>> It sounds like what's going on is that a single-syllabic stem is being 
>> employed to form new -ee words. I wonder if there's a phonetic template 
>> that's causing this...
>>
>> Benjamin Barrett
>> a cyberbreath for language life
>> livinglanguages.wordpress.com
>>
>> David Tuggy wrote:
>>   
>>> -ee spawns oddities, it seems to me. Two others I have enjoyed, and 
>>> seen in fairly high-falutin’ publications, are baptee (=one who has 
>>> been baptized) and dediquee.
>>>
>>> --David Tuggy
>>>
>>> Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>>
>>>     
>>>> The normal formation is to add -er/-or to get the person doing it and 
>>>> add -ee to the receiver of the action. So employ-> employer, employee, 
>>>> address -> addresser, addressee. There isn't a verb for mentor, but 
>>>> using back formation you get: mentor <- ment and then ment -> mentee. BB
>>>>
>>>> Fritz Goerling wrote:
>>>>   
>>>>       
>>>>> I discussed with David Frank, an SIL colleague on this list, whether 
>>>>> ”mentee” or “mentoree” is more common. 
>>>>>         
>>>>   




 
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